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08 April, 2014

Dealing with the pressure, and making do when I can't find what I am looking for...

The loose dangly feeder hose from the regulator to the hose reel bugs me, a lot... So last night I decided to do something about it... And well... attach it to the wall / ceiling and keep it from drooping into my head while getting into the mechanics toolbox...

Do you ever just KNOW you had something, but you have no clue where you put it?

I was that way last night, actually sort of still am...

You see I just KNOW I have 2 partial rolls, somewhere in that shop, of the plastic plumbers strapping. I figured since I mostly used the stuff for my dust collection ducting, it would be by my surplus dust collection pieces...

Nope.

In the totes with the drywall stuff maybe?

Nope...

Well long story short, I looked high and low and just couldn't locate the stuff... So I did what comes naturally...

I made a substitute.

In my digging I found a nice, big, heavy duty zip tie. It must have been from the compressor pallet or something because this sucker was huge. Probably 3/8" wide x 30" long...

So I roughly sized up the pieces I needed, some tin snip action here, a little drilling there, and loop it around the hose and screw through the sheetrock into the stud and we are golden!

The vertical only took 2 improvised clamps to secure it.

The very simple improvised clamps. I know this is not

the designed function of this zip tie, but it sure works well!

Going across the ceiling is more of the repurposed zip tie and screws!

I am not completely done with this yet, I still need to drop the shop light down so that the hose can run over it. Once that is done, I have 3 more clamps to fab up and install, and this project is DONE!

So far in use, I can say that the hose reel has functioned actually better than anticipated. It pays out hose smoothly, and easily, and with a tug past the catch, it retracts smoothly and predictably.

All pnuematic tools I own have been tested against this rig, even the Earthquake Impact, and everything works as expected.